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Another Reason You Might Not Want to Be President

By Hugo Lindgren October 12, 2012 5:36 pmOctober 12, 2012 5:36 pm

Photo

The Times Magazine, Apr. 20, 1975.Credit

Among the memorable tidbits of Michael Lewis’s extended hang at the White House for Vanity Fair was President Obama’s description of his ascetic lifestyle. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” the president told Lewis. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

Some of the dietary decisions that presidents don’t get to make are shown in a historical photo essay in this week’s special Food & Drink issue of the magazine, and with a few exceptions, like an ice-cream cone that President Kennedy is enjoying, it’s not a pretty sight. But what must be the all-time least appetizing example of presidential dining comes from a 1975 story in this magazine, a classic work of journalism by John Hersey on the week he spent hanging out with President Ford. (The article is not available online.)

Day in and day out, Mr. Ford eats exactly the same lunch — a ball of cottage cheese, over which he pours a small pitcherful of A-1 Sauce, a sliced onion or a quartered tomato, and a small helping of butter-pecan ice cream. “Eating and sleeping,” he says to me, “are a waste of time.”

Ford also woke at 5:30 a.m. and worked out vigorously in his pajamas and bathrobe. So compared to him, Obama lives the life of a raging sybarite.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…